If Hoosiers held any hope that the Republican Party’s partisan grudge against Democratic Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz would fade in intensity and die before being enshrined in state law, those hopes have been all but officially dashed.
The Indiana House of Representatives, controlled as is the Senate by a GOP super majority, passed a bill on Tuesday that effectively strips Ritz, the only Democratic statewide elected officeholder, of her chairmanship on the Indiana State Board of Education. For the bill to become law, it must be signed by Gov. Mike Pence, which is a foregone conclusion. It was, after all, his idea.
Pence and his partisan allies claimed the move to allow the state board to choose its own chair was motivated by the need to repair the political dysfunction interfering with the board’s essential work. Yet they refuse to acknowledge that the dysfunction they decry was caused by their own actions, namely Pence’s creation of a shadow education agency to harass Ritz and foment the dysfunction he then sought to be rid of.
Superintendent Ritz was elected in 2012 by an overwhelming margin to replace highly unpopular former superintendent Tony Bennett. Democrats even like to point out that Ritz got far more votes than Pence himself did in his tight gubernatorial race. She has been a monumental thorn in the GOP’s side ever since. It wasn’t enough to hold control of every facet of state government except the Indiana Department of Education. Republicans wanted it all, and were willing to subvert the will of the voters to get it.
Republicans such as Terre Haute Rep. Alan Morrison have claimed the bill is about policy, not politics. Republicans were not, he said, trying to make a political end run around state voters who elected Ritz. Other state boards of education around the country operate by choosing their own chair, so why not Indiana, Morrison asked. Fair question. But why must something so loaded with political ramifications and subplots be adopted in the middle of the current superintendent’s term? Why not have the new law take effect at the beginning of the superintendent’s next term? At least then the voters would know what they were choosing the superintendent to do. Such a compromise would also somewhat sidestep the appearance of heavy-handed political retribution on Ritz.
But that common-sense proposal was rejected. What does that say about claims by Morrison and his legislative cohorts that politics wasn’t a factor in this issue? We think it says a lot.
There has been no shortage of partisan mischief exercised by this GOP super majority. The legislative attack on Ritz’s power is destined to be among the prime exhibits.